


Construct and Artifice

by manicr



Category: Dark Avengers (Comic), Dark Wolverine (Comics), Marvel (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Art School, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mild Gore, S&M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-09
Updated: 2015-09-09
Packaged: 2018-04-19 22:02:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4762637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manicr/pseuds/manicr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Dark Avengers in art school. Relationship drama, art and intrigue.</p><p>Collecting and reposting all of this AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Devil in Red

"I really don’t understand how that is supposed to be art,” Daken remarked on seeing Lester’s, “call me Bullseye”, final project of the term. It seemed to be some kind of multilimbed amorphous sculpture drenched in viscous red paint with strange pieces of pipe sticking out of it. Upon slightly closer inspection, he could also see what looked like human faces on it. They were screaming in pain.

"Pfft! Like you have any idea what real art looks like," Lester griped, hands drenched in red, looking the part of a deranged serial killer rather than an art student.

"I’ll have you know that my paintings are and always have been the best in this school," Daken retorted.

"Uh-huh, yeah if you like perfect forgeries, and sentimental mommy issues on canvas.” Lester grinned and poked at one of the pipes, smearing more paint on it.

"You know, whatever talent you have is completely drowned by your lack of taste. I’m not afraid to admit that you have a good eye and hands — but what you do with it? Unmitigated insane crap. I’m surprised you haven’t been expelled yet," Daken sneered. The backhanded compliment was true enough. Lester was phenomenal at creating whatever he saw in his mind’s eye, and the beautiful detail work he could do was sometimes awe-inspiring. Then he went and hid it all in a bucker of, inevitably red, paint and brain-sucking weirdness. At least, this time, he hadn’t crafted a man sized giant crossbow

"Whatever, faggot. I’m magic." Lester hummed and smeared and dribbled more paint on the sculpture. "Shouldn’t you be working too?"

"My piece needs to dry. Thought I’d see what insane brain child you’ve created this time." Daken shrugged, his piece was nearly done, and he wasn’t the least bit concerned. Unalike right about 90% of all the students who seemed to be having a collective psychosis and crying fit.

"It’s my masterpiece! I call it the Devil," Lester exclaimed dramatically. Daken blinked at the name and tried to square it with what he was seeing. Well, sure enough there we’re little horns and tails mixed up in the sculpture, faint and covered in thick paint. The more he stared at the piece, the more Daken thought that he could start to see some kind of pattern.

"Pro tip. Walk around it as you look at it," the paint-splattered artist suggested in an excited tone, seeing his confusion. With a wary glance at him, Daken followed his advice and walked around the sculpture, the pattern became clearer, but it was hard too see with the jagged pipes and the paint.

"—It’s a man? The Devil.” he asked, eyebrow raised.

"Bingo! Isn’t it amazing?" Lester preened. Daken looked at the sculpture again, recognizing the figure hidden in the movement that Lester had meticulously carved. It was all one man, one image, contorted into dozens, being impaled to death and stuck in the moment of its torture. It was gruesome, yet oddly captivating, now that he understood and saw what he had been looking at.

"He’s beautiful. Have you been thinking about me?" Daken said and flashed him a dirty smile. He should have expected the splatter of paint. Damn, he had liked this t-shirt.

"Fuck you, fuckhead. That’s not your face," Bullseye grumbled in a low voice and crossed his arms, smearing paint on himself.

"I can see that. Skipping your meds again, sweetness? Have the nightmares returned?" Daken asked, pretending to be immersed in studying the detail work on one of the Devil’s faces. He didn’t look up but he might as well have, Lester’s displeasure and anger came of him in waves. Daken waited him out patiently.

"None of your business," he said quietly, tense as a coil. Daken hummed, his gaze remained fixated at the faces, giving Lester time to compose himself.

"Gotta let it dry now. Don’t touch it. I’ll fucking kill you if you mess up my work,”  Lester continued and Daken finally looked up at him again as he stood.

"I won’t." Daken smiled and crossed the distance between them, planting a kiss on Lester’s cheek, one of the few places that weren’t covered in red. "For luck."

"Don’t fucking need it." Lester spat and flushed, looking around to see if anyone else had entered the room. He didn’t tolerate witnesses. Daken suspected that if he ever kissed him in public, Lester’s next work would be performance art murder.

"I know," Daken replied and sauntered off, certain that Lester would be turning up in his room later that night regardless of how much work there was to do.


	2. Drafting (im)perfection

Daken stared down at the sketch beneath his manicured hands, grimacing at the imperfections of his line art – not flaws or mistakes,imperfections, nagging little aberrations that destroyed his careful composition. He wanted a perfect model of what he would paint, he wanted to see his plans neatly outlaid in front of him so that he could proceed without getting caught up by uncertainties. His teachers both commended and criticized this approach. Lester called him a control freak.

Daken scoffed. As if that monomaniac had any right to call anyone a control freak.He grabbed a scalpel and sharped his pencil, chipping off the annoying rounded edge. He stilled mid movement and glanced at the blade, the thought of slashing up both his work and his own flesh swam in his mind like a shark. He sneered, mentally swatting away the intrusive notion and focused on getting the pencil just right.

A loud squeal from the hallway echoed and laughter followed, Daken wanted to press the scalpel to their throats for the intrusion.

Quelling his desire for violence, Daken grabbed his headphones and put on his work music: a medley of instrumental classical music. It didn’t take long for his hands to relax back into their task and his mind to settle on his vision.

His therapist had suggested music to deal with the intrusive thoughts and the bouts of self-destructiveness, and Daken had to give it to doctor Samson that it had worked somewhat. Samson had tried to focus solely on cognitive and behavioral therapy during their meetings, telling him that medication, while often helpful, wasn’t what he, with his particular problems, needed. Daken thought most of it was a load of bullshit but going to the good doctor kept his father off his back.

Maybe he should refer Lester to him – might do him some good. But then again, sometimes it was just too fun to wind him up and watch him go. Samson called him a ‘pathological sadist’ when he expressed these type of feelings but expanded that there were ways to safely channel his urges. Informed consent and established boundaries. Blah blah.

Daken got bored with him when he started to explain and lecture instead of just reacting like normal people. Then again normal people were boring as well. Thankfully, his school had its fair share of freaks for him to entertain himself with when he got bored.

Speaking of freaks, the noise levels had risen again and was detracting from Chopin’s Op. 55, No. 1 in F minor. Ripping off the headphones with a snarl, Daken stalked to the door to yell at the idiots who were ruining his concentration. Frankly speaking, he didn’t known what he’d expected, but seeing the entire hallway turned into a giant slip and slide wasn’t it. Daken watched Mac Gargan glide past him with a high-pitched shriek, and closed the door resolutely. He had no intention of being dragged into dorm madness. He needed to get his own apartment stat.

Turning back to his work, Daken felt a surge of distaste at the nearly perfect sketch of late renaissance style bodies intertwining in sensuous violence. The assignment had been simple enough, to emulate a period style while adding a sense of modernity to it. He had intended to let his color scheme reflect the latter but now, looking at his sketch, all he wanted was to burn the damn thing. Let it all burn.

Rage surged in him and left his body tense and his vision swimming, clenching his fists tightly and schooling his face into a pleasant smile he forced the feeling to subside. Pulling out a clean sheet of paper, Daken drew with bold lines without stopping or reflecting on what he was doing. A man’s shape grew, a beast of a masculine figure in violent motion – it felt more like one of Lester’s insane brain children, forced on paper rather than the combination of sculpture and construct that was the other man’s forte, than anything of his own. Expressionism, sloppily executed, Daken clinically identified and crumpled the paper with shaking hands.

He needed clarity and calm. He couldn’t work like this. He wasn’t Lester who burned for his art like a pyre, consuming himself in effigy with each piece.

Daken tried again, focusing on Lester’s face, sketching forth the lines of his face, all from the intense brow to the manic quirk of his lips, stopping briefly to stare at the curve of his mouth as if it was truly there for him to touch. He looked wrong, there was something missing and Daken didn’t have a clue of what it was. He could do better than this.

Unbidden, his eyes flashed to the discarded scalpel and his mind concocted excuses for cuts. It was an accident. He slipped. It runs in the family. The last thought had him startle and laugh mirthlessly. Laura had cut herself for years, Daken had dressed her wounds and silently shared the burden. He wasn’t a cutter. It was different with him. Unlike her, he’d rather hurt someone else, but there was something to be said for pain. He clutched his pencil and sat rigidly, his chest and throat constricting.

The thought of taking the blade to Lester’s throat – he could nearly hear how he would laugh at him, defiant and daring him to even try – filled him like fever dream. The red paint that usually stained Lester became blood in his fantasy, both of their desire soaked in red like the devils of the deranged sculptor’s making. His fantasy turns and the blade is now embedded in his own guts, as Bullseye, the nom de plume apt for once, cuts him open with uncanny precision. It doesn’t kill him and he reached for bloodied kisses, gurgling blood as his lungs filled with the stuff.

The snap of wood and graphite had him reeling back into the reality, a strangled breath left Daken and he unzipped his tented dress pants. He was painfully hard and burning under his own touch, closing his eyes and leaning back in his seat as he helped himself. Once he finished and his mind stopped racing, all he felt was disgust and apathy. Daken wiped his hand off on his stained shirt and dumped it in the laundry hamper, tucking himself into his brand underwear as he went.

The swift knock on his door and Karla barging in before he had the time to say anything, left him standing dumbly with his pants unzipped and shirtless.

“You can’t believe what just happened— oh, did I interrupt something?” Karla said, appreciatively staring at his chest and groin. Daken didn’t move to cover himself, he was fit enough not to feel self-conscious and Karla was attractive. He did have a thing for blue-eyed blonds.

“My hallway has been turned into a slip and slide, last week it was covered in balloons, so I’m rather open to believing in most things. Did someone set fire to something?” Daken said and went to his closet, looking for something decent to wear.

“Nothing so crass,” she hummed, wandering over to his desk and looking at his drawings. Daken fought the urge to tell her off, pulling on a casual tank and zipping his pants.

“Beautiful, as always.” Karla lingered slightly at the portrait of Lester with a raised eyebrow, tapping the image with a red lacquered nail.

Daken knew that she had had a thing with Lester, fuck buddies of a sort after she broke up with Barton. It had gone badly. She’d even talked about quitting art and taking up medicine or psychology, which would have been a pity. Her frescoes were exquisite and she had a great eye for restoration. Daken had more than once admired her shapely form in over-sized shirts and tiny shorts covered in paint, single-intendedly working with the wet plaster with speed and skill. Then again her personal carnage was as tied to her art as Lester’s was – she was merely all about understanding and, to some extent, mending damage.

“Thank you.” Daken didn’t remark on the portrait. “What was it that you wanted?”

“Ah, merely that we have a change of faculty. Osborn was suspended for some undisclosed scandal.”

“Which I suppose you know everything about.”

“There were some rumors about relations with students and embezzling of funds. Others say that he had a mental breakdown.”

“Welcome to the nuthouse. Is there anyone here who isn’t crazy? Present company excluded, of course.” Karla smiled at the disclaimer and cocked her head.

“I doubt it. Then again, we are one of the best in the country, one can tolerate a certain amount of insanity for the sake of art. If anything, it would make for an interesting case study about the psychopathology of artists,” she said loftily, leaning back on his desk.

“You’ve been hitting the books, doctor Sofen.” Daken gave her an indulgent smile and sat down on his bed. She shrugged and stared out of the window, tugging at her own sleeve – a pensive look on her.

“I have. Friendly advise, don’t get too involved.”

“Excuse me?”

“He’ll drag you in and you’ll hate what you’ll become if you get caught.” Karla said, her voice toneless and at odds with the emotion in her tense body.

Daken caught her eye and let some of the violence in him force her to look away. He itched to goad her, to make her see him, past the lies and the flirtation. Sensibility has him holding back, he merely rose and stepped into her space, lifting up her chin to face him. She was a good two inches taller than him flatfooted, but she was sitting on the desk, which gave him the advantage.

“You have no cause for concern, Karla.” The words were honeyed, nearly whispered into her ear, and the smile that played on his lips was deliberately seductive. Karla stared at him with a coldness he hadn’t expected and she frowned briefly before settling on a determined face.

“No, I don’t, do I.” A statement, not a question. She slipped past him and went to his door, pausing briefly and looking back at him over her shoulder. Her hair a golden flash as it flew over her slim back and deceptively fragile shoulders.

“I had thought— nevermind. It doesn’t matter anymore.” She left. He didn’t know how to react. Instead, he looked down at the papers on his desk, catching the eyes of his drawing of Lester.

 _Oh_. So, that was what he’d done wrong. Grabbing a pencil and eraser, Daken both added shadows and highlights. Finally satisfied with the look, Daken smiled at the manic glint and the murderous intent that made him feel stripped bare of everything. He wouldn’t hand this one in. It was far too personal for that. Lester would throw a fit if he did, anyhow.


	3. Constructive Criticism

“It would be perfect. You just need less clothes.” Daken grinned and looked him over head to toe, lingering just a little too long with less than professional interest. 

“ _Fuck you_. I didn’t sign up to do a nude,” Lester hissed and moved out of the position Daken had coaxed him into; Lester  _was_  a rather recalcitrant model.

“Did I say nude? Really now, sweetness, you tell me that my mind is in the gutter. All I want is for you to remove that ridiculous hoodie and toque. No need to jump to conclusions.”

“I can’t believe I ever agreed to this.”

“I modeled for  _you_. And frankly, your creation was far more indecent than any nudity might be. I’m still utterly  _agog_  that the board lets you display those murder fetishistic monstrosities.” 

“Personally, I thought it was oddly sweet.” The remark came from the doorway, both of them turned to look at Karla who had wandered in. “He really did capture you well, Akihiro, even in contorted imaginary. It made the  _carnality_ of the piece an emotive affect rather than his usual shock tactics.”

Lester’s face soured and he crossed his arms defensively. “Neither of you get it.”

“The eye of the beholder, Lester. Besides, Akihiro is right. You  _should_ strip.” Karla lingered over the rough sketch Daken had made for pose reference, contemplating it critically. “However, this needs adjustment too. You really need to get outside of your comfort zone and get your ideas ironed out properly.”

“Still with us then, darling? I had started to think that you had dropped out, haven’t seen you around much,” Daken replied venomously, bristling at her criticism. She had been avoiding him since their last tête-à-tête. He had told himself that she was jealous and scorned, but her current behavior seemed to indicate differently.   

“I will finish my BA. No point in wasting the time and money I’ve already spent on this place, besides a girl needs a hobby.” Karla’s dismissive attitude made them both glare at her and share a look, ‘hobby’ indeed.

“Oh for crying out loud, boys. Put on your big boy pants and suck it up,”  she snapped and tossed her hair. She then grabbed a charcoal and paper, quickly drafting a sketch very similar to Daken’s with some key adjustments. “There, that will remove the stiffness and emphasize his body more dynamically while retaining your original idea.”

Daken fought the intrusive notion of snapping her neck and stiffly regarded her proposition, his jaw tightening at the sight of it. He recognized the underlying parallel to Michelangelo’s ignudi clearly now, and the stylistic choices he had made unthinkingly. It was no longer a muddy influence, but a  _choice_ enhanced by conscious reference and subversion. He  _loathed_  it and knew that she was absolutely right. It was an improvement. It was what he had  _wanted_  but been  _unable_  to articulate. A choked noise left him. Karla gracefully ignored it.

Collecting himself, his fists clenched and his nails digging into his palms, a smile painted across Daken’s mouth like a poorly etched grimace. “ _Thank you_. Sometimes, I just stare myself blind.”

“Get your eyes out of his crotch then,” Karla retorted cheerily, quite aware of his reaction and utterly fearless of his anger.

“Just because you were solely occupied with riding his dick, doesn’t mean that I am.” Daken knew that his retort was weak and petty, and that it wasn’t  _Lester_  they were fighting over, it still blurted out of him. It made him feel very childish.

“It always was his only redeeming feature. Then again, your taste in men has always been for those unhinged enough to make you seem normal by comparison.”

“I’m standing right here,  _assholes,_ ” Lester interjected in a hiss.

“We know, sweetness.”

“Fuck you too, I’m  _leaving_.”

“Stay,” Daken told him in a low voice, the order more menacing than had he raised his voice or snapped, his eyes still set on Karla who merely raised an eyebrow. She broke eye-contact first and Daken sneered at her.

“I’ll leave you to your task. Remember what I told you,” Karla stated and left with another flight of golden hair and flowing movement, her heels clicking on the hard floor. Daken glared after her and wondered briefly if she meant her criticism on his composition or the underlying attack on his person. He still couldn’t get her endgame. He still wanted to stick a straight edge compass through her throat.

“The  _fuck_  did you tell her about us,” Lester growled once she was gone, nearly vibrating with anger and finally able to air it.

“Nothing. She figured it out on her own.” Daken thumbed the sketch Karla had drawn, comparing it to his own with a cooler head. It really was better even if his was neater and less raw. It had some influence brought on by her work with reproducing and expanding the del Pollaiolo  _Dansa di nudi_  fresco, wisely taking it away from a freestanding caryatid. “Warned me against you even.”

“Yeah like  _you_  need protecting.”

“Hmm, quite. Strip for me, darling. I want to finish this sketch.”

Lester crossed his arms and glowered at him.

Daken sighed and wondered over to the door, locking it. “No more interruptions. And if you’re nice, I’ll blow you. She was right in that your cock is rather distracting.”

Lester flushed and complied, but all Daken though of was the next stroke of graphite and the plains of his body transferred to paper. He couldn’t wait to take a brush to this piece.


End file.
